Taking part in the local food movement, GSD students recently harvested the first honey – a whopping 20 pounds – from the beehive located on the roof of Gund Hall. Most of this honey will be raffled off to GSD students on October 26, with proceeds going to a local community garden.
The bees have been on the roof since spring 2011, when Connie Migliazzo (MLA I ‘13) and Hallie Chen (MArch I ‘12) received seed money to start the hive. That fall the students held a design competition for a winter shelter for the hive. Last spring, the project was nominated for a Harvard Green Carpet award, which honors sustainability efforts on campus. Melissa Alexander (MAUD ‘13) and Ben Ruswick (MArch I ‘15) have joined in to help maintain the hive.
Alexander had participated in beekeeping in Nashville and wanted to contribute her knowledge to the project when she arrived at the GSD last fall. From a designer’s perspective, she says, “Working with the bees constantly reminds me of the incredibly complex systems at play in the natural world. The physical environment of the hive…the drawn wax comb, the distribution of brood and honey, the stores of propolis and pollen…is the outcome of incredibly complex, overlapping systems of weather and climate, availability of local food and water sources, even the bees’ temperament and social structure.”
Learn more about the hive at the Pollinators blog.
Photo credit: Christian Ervin